Capital letters

Hazards of booking an adventure holiday

My 14-year-old daughter is a big fan of PGL adventure holidays - she has been on several and wants to go on more. Because we can be flexible, I usually look at offers PGL makes for early booking such as £100 off, or two children for the price of one.

But there is a catch. When you take a cut-price, you are obliged to buy PGL insurance costing £34 per child for the week, even though it's in England. I already have a policy covering my whole family for a year for about £120. Can PGL really insist on its own insurance policy?KG, Oxford

Tony: You saw an activity holiday cut from £519 to £419. This was attractive, but you could not buy it at £419 as PGL insisted on £34 for insurance. So your reduction was only £66.

PGL tells Capital Letters cutting prices by £100, and then adding on £34, is more attractive than simply reducing a price by £66. And it says many of its competitors do the same.

So why can it do this when the EU package travel directive says while firms can insist on insurance they cannot force you to buy their own?

The answer lies in loopholes. While PGL says it cannot impose insurance on anyone booking an overseas trip where travel is involved, your daughter will be delivered to her holiday so, PGL says, this is not a package. In general, prices should be clear - under the price marking orders, someone selling goods for £100 cannot add on a compulsory second item.

But the orders apply to goods, not services. And holidays are services - like a legal firm's bill, for instance.

PGL admits its £34 per week cover is not the cheapest on the market. It says customers can avoid it by paying the full price for holidays. This is not a satisfactory choice. PGL says this is the first time the issue has been raised. It now promises to "review this policy" in the light of Capital Letters comments and feedback from other customers.

In all the chaos, easyJet deserves the praise

Last summer I booked flights on a LloydsTSB Visa card with Expedia to Montpellier on GB Airlines to attend my partner's dad's 70th birthday. He died before the flight. Expedia refused a refund but said I could take another flight. But then GB was taken over by easyJet which promised a cash refund. This should have gone back to my card. However, then LloydsTSB replaced my Visa with a Mastercard.

Expedia said it could only refund my £422 to the original card number and the bank assured me on several occasions that any money paid to that old card number would be placed in a holding account and subsequently transferred to my new credit card.<

Finally, LloydsTSB said Expedia had refunded the money but the bank rejected this as there was no matching account number. Please help.ED, London

Tony: It is rare for Capital Letters to speak well of a budget airline but easyJet does deserve a plaudit for returning your money. But no one else in this saga deserves anything but derision. Expedia, which received the money from easyJet, says that for "anti-fraud" reasons it would not send a cheque. It could, of course, have contacted you (rather than you having to make countless phone calls) and worked out another way to refund your cash.

LloydsTSB changed your card for an "upgrade", but failed to keep a record that would have linked the two. Then your money yo-yoed between bank and travel agent. But once this column became involved, the bank called Expedia and, within hours, your money was back with you. LloydsTSB will also send you £40 to say sorry for its delays. Expedia limits itself to a statement that it responds to 97% of complaints within Association of British Travel Agent guidelines.

When all else fails how about pigeon post?

On the advice of a financial adviser, we transferred some investments onto the Lifetimeportfolio Platform in April 2006. We were told this platform, part of Norwich Union, would give us one-stop shopping for all our holdings, mostly income funds. Until this transfer, dividends were paid directly into my bank account without problems.

But since we switched our money to the platform, no payments have been made, nor is there any trace of income recorded on the client reports. I estimate £2,000 is missing, but obviously I cannot be certain.

Please find our money.PR, Birmingham

Tony: Repeated enquiries over nearly two years produced no explanation, other than an admission there was an unspecified computer problem on your account which "prevented your income from being paid". Capital Letters told NU that if the IT department failed, there was always the quill pen and pigeon post.

Once we became involved, there was movement. NU discovered the delay firstly occurred because of problems with units in the New Star Fixed Interest Fund due to a confusion over re-investment and income distribution. This has been corrected. But beyond that, there were technical problems so NU could not send any money from any holding. After two years, these have now been resolved. NU's IT department has succeeded in correcting the fault. You have now been sent your missing money - just over £2,000 - plus a further £500 compensation to apologise for the trouble you had.

Isa offers that are a passport to misery

On April 6 this year I applied for an Alliance & Leicester Direct Isa as it was offering a table-topping 6.25%. A few days later, I received a letter asking me to confirm my identity within five days, or I might have to reapply. I took my passport into a local branch where the cashier took a "certified copy". Two weeks later, I phoned A&L as I hadn't had any response. The bank admitted it could not find my details as it had had such a huge response, leading to a backlog. I tried again, making a fresh journey to the branch. Is this acceptable?HR, Hertfordshire

Tony: This is deja vu. Every year banks make great cash Isa offers and then find their systems are not up to the strain caused by the demand. In this case, you were obviously concerned about the copy of your passport floating around. This has never been found, but A&L says not to worry as it must be somewhere in its internal post. If it turns up, it will be shredded.

Meanwhile, A&L will write to apologise, backdate your account to April 6, and send £50 as compensation for unnecessary trips to your nearest branch.

Not worth the paper they're written on!

In Spring 2007 I bought CDs at Fopp, later returning one. I got a £10 voucher. I tried spending it at Fopp last week but it was refused. Why?FR, London

Tony: This is a Farepak situation in miniature. Fopp went bust last year. Some of its branches were bought by HMV but without liability to creditors, such as you, or suppliers. HMV cannot legally help (even though returning your £10 as a goodwill gesture would help its continuing business) as this would be giving preference to one creditor over another. Sorry.